


All My Nights Taste Like Gold (when I’m with you it’s like everything glows)

by feartoxxins (DoodlebugWriter)



Category: DCU (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Dick is crushing on Wally, Dick-centric, Drabble, Ficlet, M/M, One Shot, Pining, Short, Sleepovers, Slice of Life, Stream of Consciousness, also he can't sleep, but barely, but it's pretty low-key, little bit of a character study, sleepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28081182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoodlebugWriter/pseuds/feartoxxins
Summary: Midnights in Keystone City were quiet. Not quite Mount Justice-quiet, or even fairgrounds-quiet, but on nights like these, Robin felt wrapped up in a special kind of tranquility all its own.
Relationships: (if you squint) - Relationship, Dick Grayson & Wally West, Dick Grayson/Wally West
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	All My Nights Taste Like Gold (when I’m with you it’s like everything glows)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Waking Up Slow by Gabrielle Aplin (piano version).
> 
> Hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Also— if you ship sl*din or b*tcest of any kind, please do not interact with my works. Thank you.)

Midnights in Keystone City were quiet. Not quite Mount Justice-quiet, or even fairgrounds-quiet, but on nights like these, Robin felt wrapped up in a special kind of tranquility all its own.

There was a sort of stillness, something that kept the houses of Wally’s cul-de-sac neighborhood frozen in time, and Robin imagined the rooftops beneath the Midwestern sky blanketed in cool, starry atmosphere. (He and Wally, with Dick freshly in middle school and Wally only just getting used to it, hardly had the guts to actually sneak out to the rooftop, but Dick was sure it would bear some resemblance to the long nights spent atop parked train cars along the European countryside—back when he had felt little, and the world had seemed little, too.)

Dick sighed and rolled over onto his back, careful not to jostle Wally as he shifted his weight. The mattress springs squeaked in protest beneath him as he moved, and he resisted the urge to fidget beneath the heavy Winter quilt draped across his and Wally’s legs.

He blinked his eyes open and tilted his gaze up to Wally’s ceiling, which sported only a few lonely remnants of Wally’s old glow-in-the-dark sticker display. It seemed like forever ago that he and Wally had spent hours painstakingly arranging the dozens of little stars to mirror real constellation patterns, when Dick had let Wally rattle off the stories behind each one, never mind that Dick already knew every one Wally mentioned. (Years of sleeping out under the stars with his cousins plus the introductory astronomy courses Bruce had included as a part of his Robin training had left Dick with a strange sort of attachment to the night sky, and a heck of a lot of unnecessary knowledge about ancient Greek legends.)

But Wally hadn’t needed to know all that, and Dick hadn’t had the heart to interrupt him—there was something special about the way Wally trusted him enough in those moments to really open up and release his full inner nerdisms unrestrained and unashamed that made Dick feel warm inside. He knew better than most just how few people Wally felt comfortable enough around to let go like that, and as much as Dick liked to tease him and give him shit, he’d never do it over something like that, not when Wally was at his most vulnerable.

Dick grinned softly to himself in the darkness of the bedroom, and couldn’t help sparing a glance in Wally’s direction. Wally was lying face down atop the cool blue sheets, one arm tucked beneath his pillow, the other hanging over the far side of the bed. The edge of the fluffy, white quilt was bunched up at the small of his back, right where his gray t-shirt was riding up. The side of his face was pressed against the pillow, and Dick smirked at the thought of the face marks Wally was bound to wake up with.

His mouth was open, too, because if anyone on the planet would drool in their sleep, it’d be Wally West. ( _And,_ Dick thought bitterly, _if anyone on the planet would manage to look cute drooling in their sleep, it’d be Wally, too._ Just his luck.)

Dick sighed again and closed his eyes, shuffling deeper beneath the covers. Sometimes it was like his brain just couldn’t shut off. He’d always been like that, even as a kid. Dick’s dad had always told him he’d gotten it from his mom, that her mind was always on the move. It was part of what had made her such a good acrobat. After all, muscle memory and instinct can only get you so far. The ability to think on your feet can mean the difference between a fumbled recovery and a nasty—

…and something much, much worse.

Dick took a shaky breath in through his nose, then let it out through his mouth.

But Dick knew how important it was to be able to think quickly—probably better than just about anyone. He wondered if Bruce got like this, too.  
Did it keep him up at night just like it did Dick? Actually, Dick supposed it wouldn’t make much of a difference either way—not in any way that could help Dick, at least. Bruce wasn’t exactly a person known for engaging in healthy coping mechanisms.

His advice to Dick would probably be to work it off, to throw himself into distraction after distraction until he was too exhausted to keep himself awake with late night thought spirals. Oh well.

Come morning, everything would fall right back into place, just as it always did. Wally would wake Dick up with incessant poking at his cheek, and Dick would respond by cracking some half-assed line about Wally’s drooling habits, something light that his brain could manage even before he was coherent enough to put in any real effort.

Life would go on as usual, and if Dick was really lucky, he’d forget everything that had gone in his head the night before.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've ever published, and while I am pretty nervous, I'm also really excited to finally get the ball rolling. I have so many ideas, but it's taken me almost two years to actually work myself up the nerve to finish writing something and then post it. Hopefully it reads okay, but this fic isn't really meant to be perfect—it's a no-pressure sort of situation where I just let myself go and wrote as much as I could until I got tired. It's barely proof-read, and although in the future I'm sure I'll be requesting concrit feedback, I'd like to ask that people in the comments hold off on any of that sort of thing for right now. Obviously I can't really stop you, but the point of this fic wasn't to have perfect grammar or even to make a ton of sense. I just needed to take a leap of faith, and I knew the only way I could make myself do that was to not to be overly critical of myself and try to stave off the perfectionist in me for a bit. 
> 
> ANYWAY, I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to leave kudos or a comment if you want—I would very much appreciate it! You can also find me on tumblr @feartoxxins if you wanna give me a follow over there or just pop in to say hi. <3


End file.
